Thank you, Ms. Lee, did you want a further response to your comments? General comments. The Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Nitah.

Thank you, Mr. Nitah. The Chair recognizes the Premier, Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I like the message from the Member for Tu Nedhe. We all acknowledge the history of aboriginal people has been very negative, and has had a negative impact on aboriginal people across this country for the last few hundred years.

Despite everything, aboriginal people have survived. I believe aboriginal people will not only survive, but have tremendous potential to recover, to grow and prosper and be a strong people again. I believe we can be stronger than we are today. We have to have a plan and a commitment to work together to improve our lives.

While Mr. Nitah was talking, I remembered one of the first times I made print in the national paper. It was in 1975, when Commissioner Hawson was still a one-man government in the Northwest Territories. I was working with George Erasmus in the Dene Nation office. Mr. Erasmus was not available when a reporter from the Financial Post came to interview someone. I was the only one around that day. I posed for a picture, standing as tall, straight and arrogant as I could.

There was a picture of me and a quote that said "what we want is to have a lot of political control". I remember people saying it was incredible audacity for somebody that nobody knew, I was just a field worker at the time, to say something like that...but that was the kind of thing we were talking about in 1975. It was two years later the chiefs decided to put candidates forward to be elected to this Legislature. That motion is still a standing motion of the Dene chiefs, to put people in here to be Members of the Legislature.

What we have never finished is articulating the strategy of how our MLAs, chiefs and Ministers are supposed to work together once we were all in place. There is a lot of political control in place. We just have not yet decided how it should be used.

One of the biggest difficulties we have is staying positive. We know the problems. For years, people kept saying it was the federal government's fault, or it is the government's fault.

We need to get beyond that and talk about what we can do about it. What can we do? We have a Member of Parliament in Ottawa. We have a Cabinet and a Legislature that is prepared to work closely and strongly with the chiefs, Metis leaders, Inuvialuit leaders and northern peoples. It takes more than just us to do that. We are waiting, and asking the aboriginal leaders to come forward and talk with us about the things we can do together, both the immediate things as well as the long-term things. I think together we will accomplish many things.

Ms. Lee spoke of the tremendous changes she has seen in the last decade or so. There has been a lot of change since 1975. There still is so much more to be done.

Mr. Nitah talked about youth. I think the Member for Tu Nedhe articulated rather well the importance of youth. Many Members will know, especially the ones from smaller communities, about 50 percent of the voting public is under 25. A substantial portion of the people who elect us are considered youth.

We are compelled, if not by a sincere desire to do something about the youth, but to politically ascertain what it is that this part of our constituency wants us to do. What can we do to acknowledge and support them? Even more importantly, what can we do to utilize them, to use them to help us build a stronger, better future for everybody?

This ties into the elders. How the government treats the elders is related to how the youth see and relate to the elders. There is a direct relationship between the responsibility we have to the youth and the elders.

The Minister for Seniors and the Minister for Youth have been designated lead Ministers, so when the youth wish to address a question to this government, their Minister is Mr. Allen. Mr. Allen will take the issue to the appropriate Minister. It may be the Minister responsible for Justice or the Minister responsible for Education, Culture and Employment. Mr. Allen will work in partnership with those Ministers that have responsibility for youth and elders. Mr. Steen will also work in the same way. We will designate an official in the social envelope that will be their principal official to work with these two respective Ministers. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. General comments. The Member for Great Slave, Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to join my colleagues in recognizing the value and positive tone the Premier set in making his statement. I too have gathered a response that is favourable and supportive. I would like to reflect on something I think really stood out in the message, more than many of the other messages that have been delivered in this young Assembly and in previous Assemblies; the emphasis the Premier placed on Northerners' responsibility as individuals and families to make lifestyle choices that will make a difference in the quality of our society.

I have heard Mr. Kakfwi tell a story three times now, and I hope he tells it many more times. It is the story of the young lady in Tulita who had the courage to stand up in a public meeting and say that if all the well intentioned motives of politicians for self-government and constitutional development cannot help her people reduce the incidents of gambling, smoking, drinking or abuse, then it was not really doing much good.

I take that as a signal, Mr. Chairman, that really brings home what we do as leaders, and what our colleagues at other levels of government do as leaders to make a difference for someone in their community and the Northwest Territories. As small as it might be, that is something I try to ask myself everyday; what can I do or what have I done today that has made a difference to somebody?

Gaining better control of lifestyles and the things that hurt us are indeed things we should all be striving to deliver a stronger message to our people. We need to have them realize there is a responsibility there, and that there can and will be rewards for that. One of the most daunting things for me, coming in as a new Member, is to help turn the tide on the harmful things that are going on and are so well entrenched in our society.

My colleague for the Mackenzie Delta talked about the impact of the Klondike Gold Rush a hundred years ago, and that this is something that his people are feeling the effects of. We are dealing with things that are generational and go back centuries. Tobacco and alcohol have been around for a long time and we are not going to turn that tide instantly. It is frustrating for me, Mr. Chairman, that we hear requests from every community for more treatment centres and more funding to address these problems. We are treating the symptoms, not peeling off the layers and really addressing the foundations, which are choices individuals, communities and families make.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Kakfwi addressed a number of things in his Sessional Statement. One area that was not fully touched on was the area of justice. I think one of the things that has continued to be destructive in our society is a clash of values between the European justice system. When an offence is committed, there must be a penalty. There has been some very interesting, encouraging work in aboriginal communities that demonstrates this is not a value the aboriginal culture share. There can be other ways of addressing this. One term is restorative justice. One aspect is when an offence is committed, the guilty person does not make restitution to the Crown in a courtroom, but rather addresses directly the victim, and tries to come to some terms where they can understand and continue to live with each other and for the criminal to turn their life around.

Mr. Chairman, the address made reference to an aspect to division and downsizing and I believe it said that it was behind us. I think one chapter is behind us, a very big one, the creation of Nunavut. But as we continue to evolve our systems of self-government, there will be other kinds of division and downsizing that this government will be dealing with. This will be to negotiate those areas the various regions of the Northwest Territories want to assume on their own.

Our workforce has been hurt by the process of division. A lot of that hurt could not be avoided. This was a very large, and in some areas a very clumsy, way of creating a new part of the country. I do not know if it has ever been done all that nicely or cleanly before. So we are going through that now ourselves.

I believe we have a continuing challenge to streamline our resources, to carefully look at where we have strengths and where we have some positions that have been vacated and need to be bolstered. I think we can do better with the cooperation of our workforce to fill in the gaps and have a streamlined, smaller government.

My constituents tell me we have a lot of boards, a lot of process, a lot of duplication in our government and in our companion governments as authority has been delegated. It has also been said that of the 42,000 people in the Northwest Territories, 42,000 of them have a veto. It is a wonderful thing for the individual to have so much influence in what goes on in the Territory. But I believe there is a fine line where leadership takes a second shift to the ability of people to make an individual difference.

They are looking for leadership and decision now. We talked about this as a result of some of the work we were able to do in Fort Providence. We have created an expectation that we have more work to do. Caucus has yet to come together to refine that job and give the government more specific direction. We will be doing that soon.

Ours is a unique government in Canada because we are still dealing with concepts on how we are going to evolve our democracy to share power and influence.

One of the most important things that this Assembly will deal with are aspects of the sunset clause, areas of sharing governance, of constitutional development and of laying the ground work for the future and continuing evolution of this government.

Caucus has more to do and we will continue that work over the course of the next few weeks and months. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Just a note to the Assembly, there is a presentation in the Great Hall on diamonds. This is not to slow down the process, but just a reminder. Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is not much more for me to add. I think I have just about said everything that needs to be said on this. The Member's comment about division is correct. The previous Legislatures have found that, in spite of our own separate agendas for east and west, for Nunavut and this part of the Territory, the issue of division consumed us for many years.

In the previous Legislature, it was a constant item on the agenda that took up a lot of our time. Now that it is behind us, it is a huge issue that is no longer on our agenda. That was simply the intent of the remark. Now we can focus on governing ourselves here in the Western Territory and making plans amongst ourselves. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. General comments. The Member for Frame Lake, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that we report progress.

There is a motion to report progress. The motion is in order and is non-debatable. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried. We will rise and report progress.

The House will come back to order. Item 20, report of committee of the whole. Mr. Delorey.

Thank you, Mr. Delorey. We have a motion on the floor. We need a seconder. The Chair recognizes Mr. Steen as seconder. We have a motion on the floor. The motion is in order. To the motion. Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.

-- Applause

Good report. Item 21, third reading of bills. Item 22, orders of the day. Mr. Clerk.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Before we rise, I want to remind the Members there is a reception taking place in the Great Hall at five o'clock. All Members are invited to this presentation. This House stands adjourned until February 25, 2000 at 10:00 a.m.

-- ADJOURNMENT